What's Mine
by waiting4morning
Summary: An empress fights to take back what is hers. Shorts and one shots from Dishonored 2. Assume spoilers for the game.
1. Perspective

During the day, she's as focused as the keen edge of a blade. Hunt for clues, find those that wronged her, take back what's hers, somehow free her father of his stone prison... The mantra rings in her mind, solid and grounding.

But at night, when she slips back onto the _Wale_ , aching with exhaustion, her hands scored and red from too many slips on rooftops, the doubts come rushing in.

 _Was I ever a good empress?_

 _Did I do enough to catch the Crown Killer before Delilah stole my throne?_

 _Was I too distracted by Wyman?_

 _Why didn't I see the conspiracy forming underneath my nose?_

 _Do I even deserve to have my throne back?_

She knew from an early age what being empress would mean—stability of rule, peaceful shores. But she thought her nighttime training sessions with Corvo made her a different empress: she'd been on the streets, she was more than just an idle noble sitting on a chair. She'd been smug, complacent, willing to wile away a weekend with Wyman and his clever, clever hands instead of seeing to the needs of her people.

She felt a stab of guilt and loneliness. Her inattention wasn't Wyman's fault... she wished he was here, even though she'd told him to stay away. He'd crack some joke, make her smile even when it felt like the last thing she could do. But... would he let her do what needed to be done? Wyman was old-fashioned in some ways and practical. He'd be more likely to try to raise an army to oust Delilah, but Emily didn't want that, didn't want the bloodshed and horror that a prolonged civil war would bring to her country. No, it was best done quietly. She had to prove to her people that she was competent; that she could be trusted.

Since starting her crusade, she'd come to some painful realizations: she really had little idea of how average citizens waged their lives. Some were barely eking out a living, cringing in reflexive terror every time a noble walked by. They lived in terror of blood fly infestations, of piracy, of the Crown Killer. She was supposed to be empress of both commoner and noble; of rich and poor. She was supposed to take care of these people.

Corvo loved her, but his focus had been too narrow, perhaps. In training her to survive an assassination attempt - not that it had done much good when Delilah stepped through the doors - had he missed conversations among her court that would have led to the coup conspirators? Could he have gotten wind of Delilah and dealt with her pretensions before disaster struck?

Emily sighed and turned over in her bunk.

She should do better. She _would_ do better, when she had her throne back and Corvo was freed. She was already trying to be the empress her people could count on, not the empress they would fear.

Or she would die trying.


	2. Doctor Hypatia

Emily watches the doctor sleeping in her berth on the Dreadful Wale, hand gripping the hilt of her dagger. Dr. Hypatia is a fitful sleeper: she twitches and mumbles, and Emily's skin crawls, recalling the sadism in low, throaty voice that issued from the other Alexandria Hypatia... Grim Alex. The Crown Killer. The memories of the even one of the murder scenes make her want to vomit, and she forcefully pushes the image away.

Had she made the right decision to cure the doctor instead of execute her? What if this second self re-emerged? But Vasco's notes promised that the potion was a cure. Emily supposes that if Vasco was wrong, then she alone would bear the consequences should Grim Alex suddenly return.

And... yet, Vasco himself had been alive for awhile. Perhaps Dr. Hypatia's better self had been able to re-assert control for small bits of time. That was an encouraging thought.

The important part was now the murders were stopped and the Duke would no longer be able to use the Crown Killer to work against her, to spread fear among her people.

Emiliy sighs and turns to go.

"Your Majesty?"

Emily turns. Dr. Hypatia is sitting up on her bunk, blinking groggily.

"Dr. Hypatia. I'm sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep. We can speak another time."

The gray haired doctor nods, but her face is troubled. "Your Majesty... did I... hurt someone while I was poisoned?"

Emily hesitates, but the doctor rushes on. "I have such terrible dreams... and poor Vasco..." Her eyes fill with tears.

Emily curses inwardly. She hadn't a chance to hide what was left Vasco's body before injecting the Crown Killer with the cure, and of course Dr. Hypatia would have seen her old friend and the horrible way he had died with no explanation readily at hand.

Emily softens her voice. "You were not yourself," she says, knowing that it is not really an answer to her question. She pauses. "My father told me once that after my mother's murder, he felt like he was a different person, that the grief and shock had twisted his mind into something..." she swallowed the word "grim", "something dark. He said that after he found me, rescued me from political schemers, was when he truly woke up." She paused the let that sink in. "There are things I've done that I'm not proud of either, and those are things that I remember. But I remember that my mother believed in me, and my father crawled back from the dark. You can do that too, doctor. Look at the light and follow that."

The hollowness doesn't quite vanish from the doctor's eyes, but she looks a little more determined at least. Emily turns to go, finding herself mouthing the words she'd spoken to the doctor: "Look at the light and follow that."

It was a good thing to remember.


	3. The Outsider

Emily had always respected the Abbey of the Everyman. High Overseer Khulan was an excellent man and many of her people followed the Strictures. She didn't feel particularly attached to them herself, but she respected the comfort that people drew from the Abbey.

With all the Abbey's fear mongering about the Outsider, however, she had privately laughed. A vague supernatural entity as a stand in for bad behavior? It seemed quaint and ridiculous; a product of old belief from simpler times.

But now she stood in the Void, face to face with the Outsider, and she knew that everything that the Abbey said about the Outsider was true... and somehow false at the same time.

He stood, waiting for her answer, and she sensed that he would be content to stand there for an eternity, watching her (looking through her) until she decided. Had her father faced a choice like this fifteen years ago? She wished with a sudden surge of anger, that her father hadn't kept this secret from her. Fifteen years and she'd never known Corvo had carried the Outsider's mark, not until that moment in the throne room when he'd disappeared in front of her eyes and reappeared behind Luca Abele's man reaching for her and sliced off his head.

She could have used his advice now. The Outsider didn't seem malevolent, but he didn't seem altruistic either. He felt more like... a boy playing with ants, building bridges across chasms of dirt with twigs but also throwing down rocks as obstacles out of sheer curiosity.

A gift like this had to come with a price. But Corvo was the same, right? Emily cast her mind back, certain that Corvo had not been marked before her mother's assassination. She remembered vividly when Corvo had rescued her from the Golden Cat. She remembered the warmth of his arms folding her into a tight embrace, and the smile that lit his eyes. And in the weeks following at the Hounds Pit Pub, she had watched him come and go. He had been tired, yes, and sad, but the core of who he was had never changed. If she took the Outsider's mark, would she remain unchanged? She was Empress of the Isles. Could she take such a monumental risk?

But she needed help. A one armed, one-eyed ship captain was her only ally at the moment. She needed every advantage.

With a feeling of walking to the edge of a precipice, Emily looked straight into the Outsider's ebony gaze.

"Yes, I accept."


	4. The Mark

Note: You may have noticed these are not in linear order. I'm writing these as inspiration comes.

* * *

The Mark burns on her hand like that time she accidentally touched one of Anton Sokolov's whirring, red-hot machines as a too-curious girl. It fades as she releases the energy she'd somehow built up in a way she can't really describe.

But she can't practice on the _Wale_ , not after that first time. Emily had awoken from her encounter with the Outsider, the Mark a dark brand on her hand, when the sun was still below the horizon. Thinking Megan would be in her berth, asleep, she hadn't waited for the relative privacy of a city rooftop to try out her new skills.

The ability to will herself high on an edge with a thought was exhilarating beyond her expectations. A climb like that would have taken several long minutes, fraught with the tension of slipping on sea-spray, but now she sat on the top of the _Wale_ , every nerve singing the strange song of the Outsider's Mark. The feeling dwindles, like the fading of a song, and she wonders idly what this will mean for her when this is all over, when she has ousted Delilah and rescued her father.

She'll have to hide it. Emily looks at the mark on her hand, remembering her father's old excuse for keeping his hand covered-"burn scars," he'd always said. _I guess I'll have to come up with something too,_ she thinks.

She wills— _reaches_ herself down to the deck, rising from a crouch only to stare into the startled dark eyes of Megan Foster. Emily holds her breath, a million excuses flying through her mind, all useless. She wonders what Megan's reaction will be: disgust? Terror? Megan didn't seem like the devout type, but would she make Emily leave the _Wale_ or turn Emily over to the nearest Overseer?

Unexpectedly, Megan's expression softens, a flicker of some other emotion passing over her face so quickly Emily cannot identify it.

"I see," is all she says, then turns and walks in the other direction.

Emily exhales a stream of curse words that her court would be shocked that she even knew. She should follow Megan, clear the air, explain... what? How does one "explain" the Outsider? _I may as well try to explain why rain is wet,_ she thinks, frustrated.

Instead, she retreats to the bowels of the ship, practices shooting rats with her crossbow and then takes tea and breakfast in her cabin when her hunger growls too loudly to ingore.

When Megan shows up later to confer about the day's plans, she doesn't mention the Mark, or even look at Emily sideways, as if earlier had never happened. Emily knows then, that's how it will be from now on. Known but never acknowledged.

Emily prefers it that way; it makes one less complication for her. The task ahead of her is onerous enough with worrying about Megan too.

But it also makes her feel oddly lonely. For a brief moment, she'd shared the biggest secret of her life with someone.

 _Grow up Emily,_ she tells herself. _You were already Empress, and Megan has made it clear that she has little use for nobility. You want a friend? Too bad: an empress doesn't have friends._ She remembers Alexi, then, her friend since they were both children, bleeding out in her arms, and wants to weep.

Megan's eyes flick to hers, then away. Emily straightens. "Sorry. Didn't mean to be distracted. Continue with what you were saying. I'm listening."


	5. Low-Chaos

Sneaking up on Captain Ramsey is surprisingly easy. The rage making her heart race feels like a roar in her veins, and she hesitates, hand on the hilt of her sword. She could end it now, slide the blade into his back and justice would be served... Then her hands reach out, grabbing at his throat with a strength few knew their lithe Empress possessed, and soon Ramsey falls unconscious, becoming dead weight in her arms.

For a moment she stares at him, hand gripping her sword, wondering why she doesn't run its edge across his throat. She wants to; the saber's hilt is shaking with the strength of her grip. She would be completely within her right as Empress—he was a traitor. Her head still ached from his punching her across the face. One hundred years ago, lifting a hand to a royal was grounds for immediate execution.

But Gristol was different now.

She was different.

 _"It's easy to kill," Corvo said, his large hands covering her small, shaking ones. She'd just killed a rat with a crossbow; a good hit for a twelve-year old's first try, but it was also the first life she'd knowingly taken. She wanted to cry, she wanted to throw up, she wanted her mother._

 _"But it's hard to live with the aftermath," her father said, his eyes somehow sad and kind at the same time. "The skills I teach you might save your life someday. When it's a fight between you and an enemy, you cannot hesitate, because they will not. But killing someone who is entirely at your mercy... someone who can't fight back, that's murder. You'll have to decide what you can live with; what kind of person you want to be." He paused. "What kind of person your mother thought you could be."_

Rage makes bile rise in the back of her throat. She wants to ignore her father's lessons; wants to toss them aside. Instead she glares at Ramey's prone form. How could he do this? She'd liked Ramsey—he had a wry wit that was often appreciated during long, boring security briefings. A wit that Alexi didn't often share when it was her speeches he had interrupted.

Suddenly, the rage leaves Emily as quickly as it had built, leaving her with a boundless sorrow. She re-sheaths her sword, and with a grunt of effort, pulls Ramsey's unconscious body into the safe room. He wouldn't be able to do any damage in there... and by the time she was back on her throne, she wagers he'd be ready for trial.

She locks the door behind her, staring at it for a few minutes as if she was leaving herself behind.

"No," she whispers. "I will be myself. I will live... and I will make my mother proud."

She turns on her heel, facing the dusty, unused secret entrance and walks away, head high.


	6. Heir

Sometimes Emily thinks of dying.

She doesn't mean to, not really. But in the dark stretches of night aboard the Wale, when she doesn't want to tempt the Outsider's interference in her sleep, she stares at the oddments she's been collecting from her excursions and thinks that on the next day, she could die.

She doesn't want to die—there's so much left she wants to do, so much she needs to set right—but the odds right now are against her. Even with all her skills, with all her father's training, all it would take would be one slip on a loose roof tile; a moment of inattention, a lucky guard catching sight of a masked intruder, and it would be over.

The Kaldwin line ends with her... unless, of course, Delilah is telling the truth and she really is the illegitimate daughter of Emily's grandfather. But what of Emily? What of her mother's line?

Emily stirs uneasily. She's thought of children before... but that always seemed so distant, like how one admired the artistry of a complex painting, but had no wish to own it.

Now she wonders... her heart belongs to Wyman. She knows this; has known it for more than a year now. Why has she waited?

Then again, perhaps it was good she had. Wyman is skilled with a sword and pistol, but he isn't trained by the Royal Protector. If Emily had to watch out for herself and him, or worse, herself, Wyman, and a child, she may as well leave the Isles entirely.

But things would be different... Once Delilah was taken care of, things would change. Emily couldn't be the bored Empress letting bureaucrats run her government for her; no longer could she be content to put off making a decision about her future with Wyman. She wouldn't die on this mission—couldn't die. But assassins and accidents wouldn't suddenly disappear once she had her throne back. She had to be a responsible monarch and that meant she had to have an heir.

Wyman liked to make pointed jokes about having a child with her cheekbones and his eyes, and Emily had always laughed it off before. But now...

Emily rolled over, finally closing her eyes. Maybe her royal duty in this case wouldn't be so bad.


	7. Adventure

"The machine has detected something."

 _Shit!_

Emily released her weight from the panel set into the floor and the wall that had begun to retract, rose again to the height of the ceiling with a clatter of gears, concealing her from sight. She pressed her eye against the slim crack between the hydraulic walls, watching the creepy clockwork soldier's head swivel this way and that, looking for whatever it had thought it heard.

She couldn't afford to be seen by the machine. For all she knew, they would react like human guards and alert the whole household to her presence. Then again, Jindosh had proven himself so arrogant that he hadn't even alerted his human guards after their brief meeting at the front of his house. Behind the walls, she'd overheard plenty of bored conversations between guards that never would have taken place if their boss had told them who was lurking around the house. But Jindosh loved his little games...

The clockwork soldier muttered something about going back on patrol, an indication Emily had learned from crawling in the ductwork for hours meant that it was no longer alert for an intruder.

Emily waited, heart pounding, until the clockwork soldier was further away, then pressed against the panel again. Anton Sokolov was further inside this Assessment Chamber, and if she could just figure out these stupid walls, she knew she'd be able to get to him.

The new configuration didn't seem to help much. There was still two walls separating her from Sokolov. She crept forward and peered around one of the new walls. There was another panel just a few feet away. Would that be the right one to finally let her into Sokolov's prison?

 _CLANK_.

Emily let out of muffled yelp as the clockwork soldier stepped into view behind her. It spread it's wing-like swords, focused on her. She rolled backwards to give herself some room, hand fumbling for the pistol at her hip. But as she came to her feet, she realized she was on the panel she'd spotted earlier, and new walls were now rising from the floor.

The clockwork soldier's parts groaned and sparked as the wall crushed it against the thick glass ceiling.

She released the breath she'd been holding and her grip slackened on the pistol. A year ago, she would have been disappointed not to test herself against thee mechanical monstrosities, but today she was grateful to escape. More than ever she was cognizant of the risks she took on her mission to get her kingdom back. She needed to be alive and unharmed for the sake of her people. Injured, she would have to rest up and heal on the Wale for days, weeks maybe. It was time that she didn't have. Too much time had passed already.

"Em... Emily?"

She turned. Anton Sokolov stared at her blearily from a cot behind her where a wall had lowered while she was facing down the clockwork soldier.

"Anton."

"What... what are you doing here?" he asked, as she approached. He tried to sit up, winced, then laid back down. She tried not to look horrified at the wide bruises and scrapes on his face as she knelt by his bed.

"I'm here to get you home, old friend."

Anton collapsed shortly after she got him to his feet, and with a grunt, she hefted him over her shoulder, feeling her knees creak at the old man's weight.

Emily looked at the scattered parts of the soldier as she headed toward the exit of the Assessment Chamber, feeling oddly regretful. Not for crushing the clockwork soldier, no. But sad at the knowledge that her craving for adventure had at last found a leash... at the expense of her kingdom.

Sokolov groaned, so she kept moving.


	8. Bone charms

The Mark had been enough for her at first.

Then she took a shortcut through a small, dingy apartment, trying to avoid a contingent of the Grand Guard, and found herself listening to something on the edge of her hearing.

It was musical but strange... it set her teeth on edge. Emily followed the sound to a box buried deep in a closet. Inside, buried in a handkerchief was a bonecharm.

She knew what it was. Alexi had given her one after she met Wyman to prevent pregnancy. They'd never spoken about it after, and Emily hadn't shown it to anyone, not even Corvo. Perhaps _especially_ not Corvo.

What she didn't expect was the way she could feel this new one's energy. It was a small thing—a small jolt against her skin, immediately settling into a faint hum in the back of her mind that she only noticed when she focused upon it.

Was this an effect of the Mark on her hand? She'd never noticed the singing of her bonecharm before. Did being linked to the Outsider, to the Void make her more sensitive to the things that drew upon it?

A folded square of white at the bottom of the box caught her eye.

The paper was worn and creased, smudged with so many stains she almost threw it aside, except for the words that seemed to leap off the page at her.

They were instructions for carving bone charms.

It seemed a fairly simple process—nothing like the Abbey described: nonsense about selling pieces of your soul to the Outsider and consigning yourself to the Void. This read more like a recipe for a cake... a very bizarre, and, okay, creepy cake.

There was also two small pieces of whalebone—normal, unmarked whalebone—rattling around in the box. Without thinking, Emily tucked them into her pocket along with the instructions and the bone charm, and shoved the box back into the closet.

Later that night, back on the _Dreadful Wale_ , she puzzled over the instructions and the whalebone. Afraid to try, lest she ruin the only pieces she had, but wanting desperately to have an edge against the Grand Guard. Against Delilah.

"Hey, Kaldwin-" The door creaked open and Megan stood at the door to her cabin, staring open mouthed at the bone and knife in Emily's hands and the glowing bonecharm on the desk.

"I'm not a witch," Emily blurted out.

Megan cocked her head, considering her, then chuckled and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. "Neither was I. Now, give me that knife before you hurt yourself, and I'll show you how it's done."


End file.
